The Digital Economy Bill gives government the power to cut off internet connections (from homes, schools, libraries) if they suspect anyone there of copyright infringement. That’s insane, and its only possible use is for major record labels to inflict or threaten disconnection in an effort to weigh down their trousers with as much gold as possible as they sink into the quicksand.

If you’re at all interested, go and read Ben Werdmuller’s post about the Digital Economy Bill. He makes some smart points.

Here’s the rest of the email:

Dear Andrew,

I am a musician and a web professional. I use the internet to publish my music, to share it and to sell it. I use file sharing services and sites legitimately and legally to distribute and download music that is produced and consumed outside of what the government sees as “the music industry”.

Threatening to disconnect citizens from the Internet for copyright infringement is a ham-fisted approach to regulation that benefits nobody except the major record labels and publishers, and completely ignores the subtleties of our online interactions and behaviour.

I am amazed that the Digital Economy Bill has got this far with a huge majority of both the music and the tech communities vocally disagreeing with it, and I believe that if it is allowed to be rushed through on April 6th it will strike a crippling blow to our digital society and economy which we will be unable to reverse for years to come.

This is why, as your constituent, I will not be voting for you or for your party if the Bill is passed.

People like me, who are concerned about this issue, will be looking to see who has done everything they can to make sure this Bill is not crashed through on the last day before an election.

I would very much appreciate it if you could do everything you can to raise this issue with ministers and party managers to make sure that these provisions receive proper debate and scrutiny in a new Parliament.

Ben Walker

I also believe that when people are grateful for music they will thank the musician. That might be a pat on the back after a gig, a quid in a hat, or a slice of cake. It might be a fan club subscription, a £200 gig ticket, or a yacht. But when people aren’t grateful for music there is no reason why they would thank the musician.

I don’t believe that I have a right to earn money from my music. When people are grateful for my music they offer me stuff.

Rather than leave argumentative comments all over the internet, I’m going to offer you links to some different viewpoints on the matter. All are well-argued and interesting. I don’t agree with all of them, but I think it’s important to try to see this issue from a few different perspectives.

• “To eliminate or to throttle file sharing is an assault on your rights as an artists.”, Just Say NO To Putting An End To Illegal Music Sharing. by Bruce Warila
• “In this day and age, of course, it’s particularly hard to persuade anyone to buy music, when they can just get it for free, anonymously, on the internet.”: Releasing a new album! Tell me your thoughts! by Nick Gill
• “This is like what happened when we moved from sheet music to recorded music. Only more so.”, Thing 20: Forget product – sell relationship by Andrew Dubber
• “Having an audience of 500,000 that aren’t currently making you any money would be an INCREDIBLELY WONDERFUL problem to have to solve.”, Promotion Is A Numbers Game (Get Heard!) by Steve Lawson
• “If it still sounds petulant to some people for me to say that I “expect” some reward when other people enjoy the fruits of my art, time and money, I can only respond that it sounds petulant to me when people say they expect it for free.”, Short Replies by Frank Turner

If I work out the answer I’ll let you know. ;)

It’s amazing how containers can make us lazy about content. The assumptions we make about the nature of music, collections of music, what constitutes a ‘complete work’ etc.

I absolutely agree, and I’ve come across a wonderful example of a post-Album project that not only breaks the boundaries by being 185 songs long, but is delivered as a podcast, features 185 different artists and provides better sleeve notes than I ever saw on a CD.

I’m not going to miss the album that much.

Seriously. I never thought the day would come when I would be happy to leave my record collection (and my 1983 direct drive turntable) languishing in a barn. But that’s where they are. If I feel sentimental about my dog-eared 12″ of Deep Purple’s Burn (like I did last week), I grab the torrent and ten minutes later it’s on my iPod as I stroll down the street grinning and brandishing the air guitar.

Musicians get quite precious about The Album as an artistic form, and there are loads of albums that are so much more than a simple playlist of songs. Sleeve notes and artwork also help to create a listening experience around the music. That’s great, and there’s nothing to stop musicians creating 45-minute collections of songs for download if that’s what they want to do. They can even separate them into Side A and Side B if they like. Two ZIP files instead of one. And sleeve notes work really well online – check out David Jennings’ wonderful 69 Love Songs companion piece.

When you think about it, the album was good for a few things:

• It gave musicians a form within which to create music.
• It gave the audience an easy and understandable way of supporting an artist.
• It gave the record company a product.
• It was a carrier for sleeve notes and artwork (aka. context).

Now the record industry is concerning itself with collapse, profits and Britain’s Got Talent. The audience has a new easy, understandable way of supporting an artist (iTunes etc.). The musicians are starting to realise that it’s not very difficult to replace the creative limitations of the album format with limitations of their own devising. Being creative is, after all, what they are supposed to be good at.

So now we can create whatever musical projects we like to catch people’s attention, it’s the really creative artists who are making waves. Roger and Dave are a pair of musicians, artists and producers who work in New York. They have come up with the best idea I have heard in, well, ever.

The Beatles Complete On Ukulele

It sounds like the kind of project I would find scrawled in my Moleskine the morning after a party. On finding this message from my enlightened self, I would chuckle and cross it neatly out. Because I’m not as brilliant and visionary as Roger and Dave.

The concept is simple (and it’s all about the concept):

Roger and Dave will….

1. Record & perform on ukulele all 185 original compositions by The Beatles with 185 guest artists.
2. Write essays to coincide with each release.
3. Make available for download one new recording and essay every Tuesday for 185 weeks, beginning January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day) and climaxing July 24, 2012 (The eve of the London Olympics).

Each song is posted on a simple Blogger website, and there’s an RSS feed so you can subscribe to the project as a podcast in iTunes. And that’s where it becomes really interesting, and where Roger and Dave have created something new and beautiful.

It’s all about the experience

When you listen to the latest Beatles cover on your iPod, the accompanying essay (aka. sleeve notes) is displayed on your iPod screen. So you read it as you’re listening. They give you an amusing but incredibly well researched insight into the writing and recording of the original, including anecdotes and rambles about what John and Paul were up to at that point in their songwriting career. They critique the song and the recording as songwriters, producers, curators and archivists. Then they introduce you to whoever is covering the song (a different musician sings each week, and they provide the ukulele and produce the rest of the track).

By the time you’re half way through reading the sleeve notes the song has finished, so you put it on again to get the rest of the essay. And maybe again. You listen to the song two or three times through while reading about it and immersing yourself in the details and the stories. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this the mythical value of The Album? Didn’t you used to sit on your bed listening to the album all the way through two or three times while scouring the sleeve notes and the artwork for context, reassurance and trivia?

That’s how I felt when I sat on the train listening to Emily Zuzik singing Hold Me Tight (one of the most exhiliratingly cool tracks I’ve heard for years) and reading the essay. Try it. Right now. Press play and read the quote:

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

The tune features an incredibly precocious vocal melody over a swinging American Rhythm and Blues form. Fabulous harmony. But critically, Hold Me Tight is marred by insipid innocuous non-threatening male expressions of affection, designed to elicit the slightest of squeals from a twittering Tween. Lyrically typical of the songs Lennon and McCartney were writing at the time, our Hero is not even getting to first base. Hold Me Tight. I Wanna Hold Your Hand. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You. Young girls like to be liked. But not too much. Don’t go too far. Musically this song is a success. Lyrically, embarrassing. What’s going on here? The contrast between the Beatles STD-riddled, licentious and voluptuous pill popping real lives, and the lyrics of their early teenage puppy love songs, was vast. I believe this cognitive dissonance was a central facet of their initial appeal.

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m looking for in a listening experience. An experience. I want my music to arrive with this much context built in. We’ve been doing it with video, with live shows and with websites of vaguely interesting writing. And now Roger and Dave are doing it with a podcast. And a ukulele.

It Won’t Be Long

When you come across a project like this, you would be insane not to get involved. So when Roger and Dave asked me to record a song for TBCOU, I dug out my old Beatles records and searched for a song to cover. I didn’t have to look far. It Won’t Be Long is the first track on With The Beatles, which is the first Beatles album I ever heard while digging through my dad’s collection back in the late eighties. The song is fun, cheesy, and energetic. Ideal.

I recorded a quirky but authentic version with a simple guitar track, the main riff on piano and sixteen tracks of harmonies, and emailed it to New York. Having heard the spotless production and impeccable wit of the first 21 tracks of the project, I have a feeling this is going to be incredible.

If you want my musical recommendation for 2009 (and a podcast that will keep delivering amazing versions of songs you already love until 2012!) I suggest you subscribe to TBCOU right now. And in case you need any more persuasion, here’s the latest episode. A dub reggae version of Blackbird. Un. Fucking. Believeable. ;)

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

UPDATE: My cover of It Won’t Be Long is up on the TBCOU site, and it’s better than I could have imagined!

I was getting carried away with the enchanting world of Social Media and reading a little too much into the Twitter song’s meteoric rise to Youtube’s bargain bin. I needed to find out what I was supposed to be doing in the real world. So I asked. My wonderful newsletter readers took time out of their busy days to fill out a survey for me, and I present the results to you here, as a reminder that most of the world doesn’t give a fig that you have just signed up to twenty three more websites and figured out how to watch yourself recording demos in the future live on your phone.

You’re smart people, and you can read your own interpretations into the data. I will only point out that the top answers feature words like CD, shop, radio, and friends. So let’s not get carried away with our web-savvy muso selves.

UPDATE: The best way to look at this is to view the full screen slideshow on Flickr. Or just click on a graph below.

This isn’t news. But it is interesting. And it’s not just me who thinks so. Nick Gill talked about it in a “review of the Bon Iver album”:http://www.themonroetransfer.co.uk/wordpress/?p=60 earlier in the week:

bq.. …the lesson for people like me is that people like stories; not just in their music & lyrics, but as related to the artist him/herself. Marketing people have known this for years, and have been extending and stretching the truth to sell more ever since they realised (see yesterday’s little rant about Lily Allen, Sandi Thom et al. for all the associated horseshit that that record-buying public was fed). People like us, making music unsolicited and undemanded, need to have actual, real stories behind our records.

And, importantly- stories are all in the telling. The story of How I Recorded My Album isn’t going to rival Ulysses but, told well enough, it might be enough to persuade people to listen to your creation. It worked for Bon Iver, it can work for us.

p. And Steve Lawson just wrote a post on “Telling Stories…”:http://www.creative-choices.co.uk/server.php?show=ConBlogEntry.147 at the Creative Choices blog yesterday:

bq.. What’s important to realise is that there’s always a story told – if you don’t tell it, someone else will. I had this conversation recently with some band-mates about a forthcoming album, explaining to them that they could frame the release of the album with their own story of how they got involved with the project, how the music came together, what it meant for them to be playing this kind of music (it’s an album of freely-improvised music that still sounds like well crafted songs…). The response from one of my fellow musos was that he wants to let the music speak for itself.

The problem here is that it never does get to speak for itself – there’s almost always a descriptive context in which people first hear music, or decide to watch a film, or visit a website – whether it be a review or a recommendation from a friend. For music especially, it can be a random encounter via radio or film, which provides a framework that may well be misleading, depending on what the DJ says about it on the radio, or the kind of images your music accompanies!

p. Wise words indeed. Check out both articles for more info and insight into the need for narrative.

bq. We performing musicians are, by and large, an insecure lot- we want our creations to be validated. Nothing says “validation” like an enormous cheque from someone who wants to make you famous. But it’s not going to happen. There are enough people who are willing to do anything to be pop stars that it’s much easier to mould them exactly as you want, rather than spend the time and effort trawling through back-room venues to find someone who has their own ideas about what they want to do. The false conception that this is how you make a career as a band is stopping thousands of musicians competing with major industry.

Nick goes on to stand on a plinth and announce his new manifesto for authentic musicianship:

bq. * Turn off your TV. It isn’t helping you. * Assume that everything a large record company tells you is a lie. The latest fresh-faced youngster does not have a groundswell of young people, who are much cooler than you, following her. She has not built a following by use of some technology that you’re only vaguely aware of. She did not write all her songs herself. Musical ability and independent spirit cannot be purchased from Toni & Guy, or from tight trousers at The Gap. * Do not invite A&R men to your shows. If you’re popular enough that they’d want to check you out for business purposes, then they’ll turn up anyway. If they do turn up, don’t let them in for free. They earn more than you, and they can claim it back on expenses anyway. * Forget about the whole idea of getting discovered. Make something that you care about, and make it as well as you can. Get a profile on the important music sites- MySpace, Last FM, Facebook, everything- and make these sites interact with each other. Write a blog. Make friends with people who are trying to do the same thing. If you’re an interesting person, people will find the things you produce interesting, and will listen to you. Find what it is about you that someone will find interesting, and tell them about it. * Do not sign up to music forums pretending to be a fan, or an interested third party. If you want people to listen to your music, ask them. * Be honest.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. ;o)

“The myth of getting discovered”:http://www.themonroetransfer.co.uk/wordpress/?p=56

I create music all the time. Mostly I create it in my head, but often I write it down (sometimes lyrics, sometimes chord symbols, occasionally real musical notes on little shakily-drawn staves). I really enjoy doing this, so it creates value for me. Unfortunately, nobody else could care less whether I’m scribbling inspired melodies or not.

h3. I create value for other people too!

So I use my music to create value for other people, and more often than not they give me something in return. Sometimes it’s beer, sometimes it’s cake, and occasionally it’s cash. Now that I’m a full-time musician (and don’t drink anywhere near as much beer as I used to!), I’m more concerned with the cake and the cash.

Now, I have a seemingly infinite source of creative energy and earth-shatteringly cool musical skills. All I need now is a heap of opportunities to create value for people. And that’s where I need your help.

h3. (Everything I do) I do it for you

In case you don’t follow these things, let me summarise the state of music in 2008:

• The record industry has no idea what’s going on
• People still love music but are getting more and more confused by marketing messages, and have no idea what’s going on
• Musicians, songwriters, bands and producers (almost all) have no idea what’s going on
• People discover more music through their networks (friends, family, office, online social networks) and less through broadcast media
• You can sell 16,000 singles, have a number one hit and make no money whatsoever.

It’s not good for the record companies, but it’s quite exciting for the rest of us. When you’re drowning in the musical equivalent of a sea of baked beans, what’s better than having your own musician, who can write music you like, play in your lounge and even listen to your problems (perhaps interpreting them in song, thus completing the cycle of happiness ;o)?

h3. Let’s be more specific.

I need cake and cash to survive. So I need opportunities to create value for other people. I create value:

• when I create music in a particular situation (live gigs)
• when I create music to fill a specific need (commissions and cowrites)
• when my musical creations are broadcast (royalties)

Royalties happen when you’re commercially successful, so we can safely ignore those for now. ;o) Gigs are often the only way to get cake and cash quickly. Commissions and cowrites are where we start to see the real value. Writing songs (and/or other music) for people and with people helps to build a reputation, get referrals and recommendations, more cake, etc. Teach a man to fish, and so on.

h3. I need your help.

I’m not asking for the moon on a stick. In fact by reading this far, I would hope you’ve internalised enough of the message to subconsciously help me somehow, some day. But some-day-cake isn’t quite the same as now-cake, so keep reading…

This list may seem huge, but most of it won’t apply to you. Skim it, and pick one thing that seems easy. That’s probably the one for you. But feel free to work your way through the entire list if you like. It’s all good:

h4. Discover me

• listen to some of my songs on “benwalkersongwriter.com”:http://www.benwalkersongwriter.com/songs
• listen to “I Hate Mornings Vol. 1“:http://www.last.fm/music/JB+Walker/I+Hate+Mornings+Vol.+1 on Last.fm
• watch the “Ten video”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovT0nEZipt0 on YouTube
• be amazed by the “experimental dance video”:http://www.benwalkersongwriter.com/film I soundtracked

h4. Recommend me

• in person: tell somebody who might be interested about what I do
• by email: forward this email to someone who doesn’t know about me
• on the web: ** subscribe to my “RSS feed”:feed://www.ihatemornings.com/rss/. ** share me with your network (“Facebook”:http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.ihatemornings.com, “Myspace”:http://www.myspace.com/benwalkercapedcrusader, “Fuzz”:http://BenWalker.fuzz.com/, “Twitter”:http://twitter.com/ihatemornings) ** mention me on your blog, status, Twitter, Christmas email… ** bookmark me in your browser, or on “Delicious”:http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ihatemornings.com&title=I%20Hate%20Mornings%3A%20Ben%20Walker%27s%20songwriting%20blog ** listen to my music on “Last.fm”:http://www.last.fm/music/JB+Walker, “Fuzz”:http://BenWalker.fuzz.com/, and let people know your favourites ** watch “my videos”:http://www.youtube.com/user/ihatemorningsdotcom on YouTube, and give ‘em some stars

h4. Book me to do something for you

• I write songs for people (pop songs, children’s songs, rock songs, folk songs)
• I write songs with people (cowriting with artists, producers, musicians, poets)
• I teach songwriting, musicianship, performance, music theory
• I play piano at parties, fêtes, dinners, funerals, bars, pubs
• I play my own songs at gigs, parties, campfires
• I play Sixties songs with “The Legendary Swordsmen”:http://www.legendaryswordsmen.com at weddings, birthdays and garden parties

h4. Give me feedback

• leave a comment on my website
• email me (ben [at] wallpaper jazz [dot] com)
• “Facebook me”:http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=529602587
• text me (07812 204396)
• comment on one of my “YouTube videos”:http://www.youtube.com/user/ihatemorningsdotcom
• “Twitter”:http://twitter.com/ihatemornings me

h3. What’s in it for you?

Everything and nothing. It depends how you look at it. Maybe you’re more than happy to be filling the world with beautiful music. Maybe you’re looking for something more tangible in return. Well, what is it? Let me know and I’ll see what I can do. My cash and cake resources are limited, but I’m sure I can tap my seemingly infinite source of creative energy for some good ideas…

The rest of the panel (David Stark ["Songlink":http://www.songlink.com/], “Bill Padley”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Padley, “Paul Tipler”:http://www.discogs.com/artist/Paul+Tipler and the other guy whose name I’ve completely forgotten) did their best to answer a bewildering array of questions from the audience, and seemed to have a story to hand for any occasion. The discussion was peppered with the usual rants about The Old Days, Learning On Tape, Bands These Days Think They Can Just [insert musical crime], but there was plenty of meat to go around.

h3. And the message is…

As always, it’s difficult to distil a coherent message from the five panellists, but I get the feeling that persuading them to agree on everything would be like asking the Ghostbusters to cross the streams – ultimately destructive. They each had a unique and interesting vantage point on the songwriting business, and they kept us effortlessly entertained for a couple of hours.

Here are some key points I fished out:

• From the start, make the elements of your demo good enough to make it onto the record. Or, don’t make a demo, make a record.
• Keep several reference tracks to hand when building up your demo, and really listen to them. Try to pick out the parts (often not the bits you notice first) that make those tracks really sing.
• Radio pop songs are extended commercials. Write an epic jingle.
• When the chorus repeats, repeat it exactly (the vocal at least). No exceptions. People should be wanting to sing along by the second chorus, and you’re making them look stupid if you sing something else.
• Don’t waste your life playing with plugins. Work on the performance until it’s great, then record it.
• A good vocal track will withstand any treatment. You can rearrange the song underneath it to be in a different style, different groove etc. Try remixing your own songs (ie. take out all the clever bits).

h3. And now… Randy Bachman’s classic tales

Just because he sounds like a classic rock legend when he tells stories, try to imagine a great grey-bearded Canadian in a tie-dye t-shirt telling this story about JJ’s bass sound:

James Jameson (the Motown bass player) never changed his strings, and they had that great flat, thuddy Motown sound. When Motown moved to LA, Jameson got a sponsorship deal from Rotosound, who gave him a brand new set of super-bright-sounding bass strings (“like piano strings…”). So he turns up for the first session in LA, and the producer stops him and says “What happened to your sound? We want the James Jameson sound!” Jameson calls the music shop that fitted his Rotosounds to ask for his old strings back. Turns out they sold them for $2,000 – they were the Motown bass strings! So Jameson hunts down the guy who bought them and eventually has to pay $6,000 to get his strings back. Genius.

h3. How Randy wrote his hits

h4. “American Woman“:http://tinysong.com/iz0

The Guess Who (his band at the time) drove from Winnipeg down to Texas to play the circuit, but when they got there the US Army tried to draft them to Vietnam. They fled back to Canada, ending up in Toronto. To make the money they needed to get back home (over 4,000 miles of snow), they took a gig in a curling rink. Randy broke a string, and while tuning his guitar he came up with the riff for American Woman, called the band back on stage and launched into it. Voila. Megahit.

h4. “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet“:http://tinysong.com/kPW

Randy was producing the Guess Who. He’s in the studio testing out the guitar levels, so he plays a quiet, jangly bit (“Only You Know What I Know“:http://tinysong.com/kPJ by Dave Mason) alternating with a loud, rocky bit. So that’s the rhythm track. Then he records a vocal to make fun of his brother who has a bad stutter (“B-b-b-baby you just ain’t seen n-n-n-nothin’ yet”), with some Van Morrison impressions thrown in for good luck (“She looked at me with those big brown eyes, and said…”). The track was only meant to send to his brother as a joke, but when the A&R guy turned up to listen through the album he decided there wasn’t a good single. Until the engineer played him the joke track, which he loved. Bingo.

As Smashie & Nicey “so memorably put it”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtZKvHmU8vg, “In the words of Messrs Bachman Turner Overdrive, LET’S ROCK!”

h3. We’re asking the wrong people

The first problem is that they don’t know the answers. The record company folks don’t know what’s coming next. We all know that. But neither do the managers, the publishers, or the lawyers. And the artists and songwriters know least of all – they don’t really know where the business is coming from, never mind where it’s headed.

The second problem is that these experts, arguably the most qualified to figure out the answers, can’t afford to get involved in the building of the new model – they have too much invested in the old model. All of these people rely on the existing corporate structures for their income, even those running independent outfits.

We need experts who really know what’s going on, and who don’t rely financially on the existence of the old music industry. And I think there are plenty of them around. People who have been constantly observing, criticising, discussing and reinventing the music industry in their blogs for years. Andrew Dubber over at “New Music Strategies”:http://newmusicstrategies.com/. “Steve Lawson”:http://www.stevelawson.net/. David Jennings, author of “Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll”:http://www.netblogsrocknroll.com/. They are all accessible through social media, blogs, articles and books. But that’s not quite the same as an expert panel, in a room, bouncing ideas off each other in front of a fascinated audience. Why not?

h3. What about networking?

Possibly the main reason people go to the City Showcase style industry workshops is to network. I walked away with a handful of business cards and a few scribbled Myspace addresses today. It’s worth going for that, even if you have to sit through the talk to get them…

But when the “new experts” speak at events they’re talking to a room full of industry people, who are invested in (ie. employed by) the old model, and therefore aren’t really listening. At best, the opinions and rants of the new media experts become novelty water-cooler conversations and pub arguments. We need a non-industry audience. A room full of people who are invested in the new model (whichever one) because the old one’s broken and the new way is the only way. People like me. ;o)

h3. Let’s do it right

So here’s my big ask to the universe:

Bring me a ticket for an all-day freeform event in London where the real experts get to talk to people who understand and care, and the new generation of social media-savvy musicians, songwriters and labels get to hang out, learn, network, create and enjoy. With free wireless, obviously.

I’ll keep you posted.